Exploring Our Love for the Conspiracy Theory

What is it about the human psyche that makes us fall in love with the unknowable, the frightening and the controversial? Why do some, in spite of the evidence, question that John F. Kennedy was shot by a lone assassin or that we walked on the moon, or that Paul McCartney is indeed still alive and not replaced by Billy Shears? And is this somehow related to our current obsessions with fallen stars like Britney Spears and Heath Ledger?

We are creatures who continually try to make sense of the world around us. In the art world it is called the gestalt effect. This is when random shapes are organized by our minds to resemble something real, such as seeing human faces in a paneled wall. Our minds are wired by years of learning, both conscious and subconsciously, to find recognizable order in chaos.

How this works in the world today is reflected in the reaction to the death of Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto was considered by some as Pakistan's only hope for democracy. As news broke that she was dead the talking heads were already trying to figure out why and how this could have happened. Suspicion was laid immediately upon Al Qaida and the Taliban. Pakistan is still reeling from this death and the army is now fighting the militants responsible. The Pakistani government's official stance is that she died as a result of head trauma from the sunroof handle of her car as she escaped an explosion near her caravan, yet relatively reasonable people think the contrary and demand an exhumation of the body to find bullet wounds. Tragic circumstances rarely ever make sense.

When Heath Ledger died last week under unusual circumstances the world turned it's head as media outlets tried to detangle the mystery of a famous young man dying so suddenly. It was reported that Ledger had died of an apparent drug overdose and not much else. This did little to deter outlets like CNN, Headline News, and others from blanketing the earth with their speculation, theories, and analysis. Things got darker when they dug up a reference to death in an old interview and mixed it with the brooding character he was portraying in the new Batman movie, calling it demonic. Conspiracy theory always slides down the sinister slope.

It seems to me the nature of man is to "see through a glass darkly"...first. It would hardly be news if Britney Spears' bizarre behavior were attributed to a simple, well executed, series of publicity pranks. Would it be any less a tragedy if the events of 9-11 were just a criminal act of 20 desperately fanatical Muslims? In that same way bumps in the night are turned into ghosts, and the howls and wails of wolf packs are turned into monstrous werewolves. Darkness comes before light and we quite willingly trod through the mud of falsehood long before we come to the truth. Why this is, is the mystery I question. Although logic and reason are the most reliable guides, experience and emotion are the forces that pull us forward. And for some reason these experiences, whatever they may be, and emotions leads masses of people to the shadowy and suspicious.

But this could be a good thing, another way in which we are wired for our own survival. It could be that deep in our subconscious minds we are still in our caves, afraid of the mists and the carnivorous dinosaurs that leap from them. Caution is a wise trait until it tends toward an odd blend of suspicion and curiosity that debilitates us. Yet it is this curiosity that is the most "curious" aspect of our love for conspiracy. There comes a point where seeking a particular version of "truth" obsesses the seeker. An example of this extreme resulted in astronaut Buzz Erwin punching a seeker/stalker who was obsessed with the theory that the moon landings were staged in Nevada.

And this has entertainment value in this culture where rumor and innuendo are swallowed as truth which is spoon fed to us by 24 hour news networks. We may seem to be in celebrity news heaven but I guessing we are really at the edge of purgatory. There is a saying about bad publicity that could be said about conspiracy. Any conspiracy is good conspiracy, even if we seem to create it for ourselves.